Words fail
me. I was simply overwhelmed by the presence of so many of my friends
at the 11 o'clock Mass last Sunday and at the reception that followed.
Your kindness to an elderly pastor whose "machinery" is visibly
breaking down and whose sixty years of service offer more than a little
upon which a harsh critic could justly "pounce" gives evidence of your
Christ-like charity. All that I can do is to say "Thank you, thank you,
thank you! May God bless you a hundredfold! And please keep me in your
prayers!"

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A few weeks ago, you may recall, I cited figures from the British
journal The Economist to
illustrate what THREE
TRILLION DOLLARS IN CASH COULD BUY-like, for example, close to
the entire global production of oil for a year. The sum of THREE trillion
dollars was chosen as a base for computation because China's CURRENT CASH RESERVES
happen to have reached that awesome level. I also pointed out that with
OUR NATIONAL
DEBT hovering for the moment at close to FOURTEEN AND A HALF
TRILLION dollars, and straining at the leash to expand, our INDEBTEDNESS is
nearly FIVE TIMES
THE SIZE of China's present CASH RESERVES.
As our government continues wildly and irresponsibly to spend on
average some FOUR
BILLION DOLLARS of borrowed money EVERY SINGLE DAY
(all of which American taxpayers are supposed to repay with interest),
a SIGNIFICANT
REDUCTION IN OUR NATIONAL GOVERNMENT'S SPENDING HABITS IS THE ONLY
SOLUTION if we are not to face in the relatively near future a TOTAL ECONOMIC COLLAPSE.

Inevitably at the mention of cuts in spending the wagons of various
vested interests start closing the circle to defend what they hold
dear. Among such vested interests are the ideological zealots who
maintain that the fundamental and urgent Christian dictate of
helping the poor in accord with one's resources somehow
translates into an all but exclusive support for the infusion of federal funds
into programs professing
to help the poor, with attendant suspension of critical judgment as to
whether all of those programs are actually achieving what
they purport to achieve, and with the question left entirely aside as
to whether certain structural elements in these programs are in fact
making matters worse.

A thoughtful weighing of the MORAL aspects of
this whole question, written by Jennifer A. Marshall of the Heritage
Foundation, appeared in the May 31st edition of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. May I share
it with you here.

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How
to Reconcile Public Budgets - and Their Multiple Moral Concerns Jennifer A. Marshall St. Paul
Pioneer Press 05/31/2011

"Budgets are moral
documents." So religious voices, rightly, have
reminded us in recent months. Now, Catholic and Protestant leaders have
launched an initiative called "Circle of Protection" to make federal
antipoverty spending untouchable in
the ongoing conversation about how to save future generations of
Americans from crushing debt.

"As Christians, we believe the moral measure of the debate is how the
most poor and vulnerable people fare," argues a statement on Circle of
Protection's website. "Funding focused on
reducing poverty should not be cut."

Protecting the status quo, however, isn't in the
best interest of the poor. Americans spend a
trillion dollars a year on more than 70 federal antipoverty programs,
double what we spent in the late 1990s. Meanwhile, the poverty rate has
remained largely unchanged since 1970, and intergenerational dependence
on government welfare is common.

The measure of our compassion for the poor should not be how much we spend on federal
antipoverty programs. Compassion must be effective. We ought to
define success by how many escape dependence on welfare to pursue their
full potential as human beings. To measure our commitment to the
poor by the number of dollars spent on
antipoverty programs is to diminish human dignity.

Why should we flatten poverty to a merely material
problem? Why should we delegate our personal responsibility for the
poor to impersonal government
programs?

In reality, we know that poverty in America goes
far deeper than lack of material resources. Research shows poverty is
linked strongly to the ABSENCE OF A FATHER in the home. Single mothers
head more than 70% of the nation's poor households with children The
poverty rate for these households would drop by roughly two-thirds IF
the mother MARRIED the father. Tacking with this kind of poverty is
much more complicated than simply designating yet more federal tax
dollars.

Budgets are indeed moral documents. But they are morally complex
documents. As in so many areas of life, more than one principal
is at stake. In solving the budget crisis, we need to account
for serving the
poor. Yet
we also have to account for our overall stewardship of resources,
commitment to the next generation, protection of national security and
respect for the proper roles of family, civil society and various
levels of government.

These and
other principles were highlighted in an exchange [of letters] between
Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee and chief
architect of a spending plan to salvage our fiscal future, and
Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference
of Catholic Bishops. Protectors of the status quo, including
some Catholic leaders, have targeted Ryan, himself a professing
Catholic. In an
April letter to Archbishop Dolan, the Wisconsin congressman explained
that his intention in the budget resolution was to better serve ALL
Americans, especially the needy.

"Nothing but hardship and pain can result from putting off the issue of the
coming debt crisis, as many who unreasonably oppose this budget
seem willing to do," Ryan wrote. Those who represent the
people, including myself, have a moral obligation,
implicit in the Church's social teaching, to address difficult basic
problems BEFORE they explode into social crisis." If the nation's leaders
do not solve the budget crisis, Ryan wrote, the poor and vulnerable
would be the HARDEST hit.

In response,
Archbishop Dolan thanked Ryan for his attention to the wide set of
values in Catholic teaching: fiscal responsibility; the role of the
family; human dignity; concern for the poor and vulnerable; and
subsidiarity, the idea that higher levels of authority should respect
those closer to the situation to exercise proper care.

As to how these principles should be implemented, "people of good will
might offer and emphasize various policy
proposals," Archbishop Dolan acknowledged. "The principles of Catholic
social teaching contain truths that need to be applied."

Over the past half century, America has relied on one application
of the poverty-fighting principle: redistributing resources through the welfare state
to overcome material
hardship. This may have raised the material standard of living for the
poor, but it hasn't raised the standard of true human
flourishing. And that approach has put us on an unsustainable path
of runaway spending, leaving leaders such as Paul Ryan with a
serious stewardship challenge. It's time for a new approach to
serve the needy.

The good news? Americans
can reconcile these multiple moral concerns in the budget
debate, as shown by Paul Ryan's plan and others-including
the Heritage Foundation's "Saving the American Dream" proposal. Getting
serious about our
moral responsibility to future generations should make us more
earnest about better
serving the poor. Let's secure the
safety net for those truly in need,
and make sure it doesn't entangle people in government dependence. [Emphasis added].

Jennifer A.
Marshall is director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society
at The Heritage foundation and author of Now and Not Yet, Making Sense of Single
Life in the Twenty-First Century. Write to her care of
The Heritage Foundation, 214 Massachusetts Ave. NE. Washington D.C.
20002.